Providing users of computers with useful and understandable interfaces for navigating and interacting with content stored upon a computer has become increasingly complex as the information stored in computing environments has grown and diversified. For example, millions of families now use digital cameras to snap hundreds of images each year. At best, people go through a laborious process of setting up separate folders and trying to logically group their many photographs. However, often the photographs are simply dumped onto the family computer into a single, disorganized directory. Making matters worse, typically digital images have non-descriptive names such as P000006.JPG.
An example of a user interface designed to facilitate user interaction with a set of digital photographs is Microsoft Corporation's Photo Table of Contents (“PhotoTOC”), described in PhotoTOC: Automatic Clustering for Browsing Personal Photographs (Microsoft Technical Report MSR-TR-2002-17, published February, 2002.) The PhotoTOC interface utilizes a clustering tool known as “AutoAlbum.” AutoAlbum uses two techniques to group, or cluster, similar photographs. First, the clustering algorithm looks at the creation time of the files, and, according to the time the images were taken, AutoAlbum groups the photographs into categories.
The second clustering technique used by AutoAlbum involves analyzing the color content of the images through a pixel analysis. This algorithm evaluates the order in which the photographs were taken by looking for the two most similar adjacent photographs. These similar photographs are clustered together in an album.
With similar photographs clustered, the images are presented to the user in the PhotoTOC interface. PhotoTOC consists of two panes. In the right pane, thumbnails of all images are displayed in the clusters. In the left pane, one representative photograph from every cluster is shown. The representative photograph for a cluster may be chosen, for example, to be the photograph in the middle of the cluster when sorted by creation time. When the user clicks on a representative photograph, the right pane scrolls to show that same photograph in the center of the right pane. In this way, the representative photograph can facilitate navigation to a desired cluster of photographs.
While this interface improves navigation among photographs, the PhotoTOC interface does not filter the photographs and always groups the photographs according to date and pixel analysis. Accordingly, an improved user interface that allows a user to control the filtering and grouping of the items would be advantageous. Additionally, an improved system and method for grouping items based on information derived from a single criterion rather than multiple criteria would be desirable, particularly when a large set of photographs are involved and grouping based upon multiple criteria becomes increasingly complex.